Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists articles from September 2001

Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists archives from September 2001

The purloined plutonium.(plutonium stolen from a reprocessing plant in Germany)(Brief Article)
September 1, 2001... A DISTURBING ITEM CAME ACROSS THE WIRES IN MID-JULY, reporting that an unknown quantity of plutonium had been taken from a reprocessing plant in Germany. The theft was heralded as only the second time that weapon-ready plutonium--the Ecstasy of...

Still powering up in Japan.
September 1, 2001... Unfortunately, "Japan's Nuclear Twilight Zone," by Shaun Burnie and Aileen Mioko Smith (May/June 2001), gives your readers a distorted view of Japan's nuclear power program. The assertions that the program, including its planned use of...

Another reason to move the clock.(Brief Article)
September 1, 2001... I agree with the arguments made by Owen Henderson that the hands of the Doomsday Clock should be advanced closer to midnight (Letters, July/August). But an even stronger rationale, in my opinion, is the Bush administration's failure to...

Political secrecy?(US-China relations)(Brief Article)
September 1, 2001... The U.S. government has often gone to great lengths to keep the "secrets" of the bomb from the public. In 1979, for example, it tried to block the Progressive from publishing an article by Howard Morland about the workings of the H-bomb (see...

A waste of space?(nuclear waste disposal on the sun)(Brief Article)
September 1, 2001... WE GET ASKED A LOT of questions at the Bulletin, some frivolous, some easy, some provocative, and a few head-scratchers. Lately, the mailbag has been heavy with space-related queries. Here are two, with answers: A reader in Wisconsin...

In short supply?(trained nuclear engineers)(Brief Article)
September 1, 2001... MONTGOMERY BURNS--or at least one impersonator of that cranky, penny-pinching owner of a nuclear power plant on The Simpsons--is bubbling over with excitement these days. Inspired by the Bush administration's call for more nuclear power, Monty...

Holy UAVs, Batman.(unmanned aerial vehicles)(Brief Article)
September 1, 2001... WHOEVER HEARD OF A bat that isn't blind? If designers at a California-based aerospace engineering company called AeroVironment are on the mark, flying, bat-like robots capable of downlinking live color video images will be the next big thing in...

Back to the drawing board?(detection of the B-2 bomber)(Brief Article)
September 1, 2001... Even as B-2 bomber supporters urged the new administration to buy more $2 billion-a-copy aircraft, the Roke Manor Research Laboratory in Britain announced its invention of a new detection system that uses ordinary mobile telephone technology to...

I see London, I see France.(Brief Article)
September 1, 2001... In its May 29 Update, the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) proudly announced that it had developed a detection system that can scan a crowd of people, peer through their clothing, and identify any guns, knives, or other...

Luckier than we knew.(history of nuclear weapons in the UK)(Brief Article)
September 1, 2001... Recently declassified Royal Air Force papers indicate that in 1958, Britain's 500-kiloton bomb, code-named "Violet Club," was rushed into service "so that Britain could match Russian and American claims of having a nuclear weapon with a megaton...

Not another fair-weather fighter.(aerospace engineering research)(Brief Article)
September 1, 2001... Nathan Kopeika of Ben-Gurion University told a conference in Florida that the U.S. Airborne Laser (ABL) project may be foiled by tiny dust particles (New Scientist, April 28). The particles, known as aerosols, can easily scatter a laser beam,...

But of course.(Brief Article)
September 1, 2001... The Defense Department's inspector general--its internal auditing agency charged with rooting out fraud--has admitted destroying audit documents and substituting fakes (Salon.com, June 6). As part of a routine program in which one government...

Good neighbor policy?(Canada's military policy)(Brief Article)
September 1, 2001... Canadians have been debating their possible participation in U.S. missile defense plans, and some have suggested that perhaps Canada could put the kibosh on the system by refusing to cooperate. But an official Canadian military analysis,...

Substitute subs.(US plan to send submarines to Taiwan)(Brief Article)
September 1, 2001... It's been more than three months since the Bush administration promised to arm Taiwan with diesel submarines, a pledge made without checking to see if the United States actually had any (Los Angeles Times, July 15). No U.S. manufacturer builds...

The sexiest geek alive.(parody pageant competition)(Brief Article)
September 1, 2001... IN THE FINAL ROUNDS of June's Sexiest Geek Alive competition, pageant judges asked contestants how many computers they had at home. Most claimed one or two--but Ellen Spertus responded that she didn't know. From her bread machine to her...

EU knocks Echelon, wants own super spy.(military surveillance by the European Union)(Brief Article)
September 1, 2001... THE EUROPEAN UNION has now published its draft report on Echelon, the secret snooping partnership between the United States, Britain, Canada, Australia, and New Zealand. Although Echelon's listening stations can intercept billions of private...

Tokai "downwinders" speak out.(nuclear accident in Tokaimura, Japan)(Brief Article)
September 1, 2001... TWO YEARS AGO, ON September 30, 1999, three workers were preparing uranium fuel in the JCO facility in Tokaimura, Japan. In an effort to speed the process, they mixed together a dangerously large amount of material, precipitating a nuclear...

ARGENTINA: Menem's star falls.(Carlos Saul Menim)
September 1, 2001... THE ELECTION OF CARLOS MENEM IN 1989 WAS SUPPOSED TO usher in a new political era for Argentina. Although democracy had returned to the country with the election five years earlier of Menem's predecessor, Raul Alfonsin, Argentina was still...

BRAZIL: Nuclear to the rescue?
September 1, 2001... IN MAY, AS BRAZIL WAS PREPARING for its winter festival celebrations, the government reported that a severe drought threatened the country's power supply. Faced with one of Brazil's worst energy crises ever, President Fernando Henrique Cardoso,...

U.S., "rogues" hold out.(arms control)
September 1, 2001... THE FIRST-EVER GLOBAL U.N. CONFERENCE on small arms and light weapons, held July 9-20, left arms control groups wanting and many governments fuming. The goal of the "U.N. Conference on the Illicit Trade in Small Arms and Light Weapons in All...

The navy says: Hands off my stash.
September 1, 2001... THE U.S. NAVY IS CLOSE TO MEETING ONE OF ITS PRIME TECHNOLOGICAL goals: The first new nuclear attack submarine of the Virginia-class will put to sea in 2004 with a lifetime reactor core. The new propulsion system, which increases operational...

Where Fermi stood.
September 1, 2001... SEPTEMBER 29 WILL MARK THE CENTENNIAL OF THE BIRTH OF ENRICO Fermi. Venerated by physicists as a master of both experiment and theory, and perhaps the greatest practitioner of the art of the "back-of-the-envelope" calculation, Fermi won the...

CHILD SOLDIERS: What about the GIRLS?
September 1, 2001... The 1992 peace accords ending the bloody 16-year civil war in Mozambique called for the demobilizing of soldiers from both the government force, Frelimo (Front for the Liberation of Mozambique), and the rebel force, Renamo (Mozambique National...

Defense when money is no object.(Statistical Data Included)(Brief Article)
September 1, 2001... The nuclear stockpile The United States conducted 18 nuclear tests in 1985, including three Defense Department "effects" tests and one test in conjunction with Britain. The cost in today's dollars was $908 million. This year, the cost...

PLANTING FEAR.(agricultural terrorism)(Brief Article)(Product Announcement)
September 1, 2001... How real is the threat of agricultural terrorism? Between February 20 and July 14 of this year, 1,844 cases of foot-and-mouth disease were reported by the British Department of Environment, Food & Rural Affairs, with a smaller number of...

THE DANISH DILEMMA.(air-base in Greenland raises land tenure issues)
September 1, 2001... HE DREAMS OF RETURNING TO his birthplace, Uummannaq, in northwest Greenland. The only problem with Uussaqqak Qujaukitsoq's dream is that it conflicts with U.S. plans for national missile defense. In May, after traveling three days across a...

CHEMICAL WEAPONS: BURIED IN THE BACKYARD.(Washington, D.C.)
September 1, 2001... IN THE NORTHWEST CORNER OF THE DISTRICT OF Columbia, sandwiched between the Potomac River and the Maryland state line, is an affluent enclave of elegant homes and tree-lined streets known as Spring Valley. This neighborhood is home to some...

CHEMICAL WEAPONS DISPOSAL: RUSSIA TRIES AGAIN.(Statistical Data Included)
September 1, 2001... IN APRIL 1987, MIKHAIL GORBACHEV TOOK HIS COUNTRY'S first step toward chemical weapons disarmament, announcing that the Soviet Union had halted production, and that a facility was being built to destroy the weapons that had been stockpiled....

Eastward to Tartary: Travels in the Balkans, the Middle East, and the Caucasus.(Review)
September 1, 2001... Eastward to Tartary: Travels in the Balkans, the Middle East, and the Caucasus By Robert D. Kaplan Random House, 2000 364 pages; $26.95 ROBERT KAPLAN WRITES ABOUT PLACES most people would rather not know about: vast swaths of the planet...

The Coming Anarchy: Shattering the Dreams of the Post Cold War.(Review)
September 1, 2001... The Coming Anarchy: Shattering the Dreams of the Post Cold War By Robert D. Kaplan Random House, 2000 198 pages; $21.95 ROBERT KAPLAN WRITES ABOUT PLACES most people would rather not know about: vast swaths of the planet where democracy and...

Blind Man's Bluff: The Untold Story of American Submarine Espionage.(Review)
September 1, 2001... Blind Man's Bluff: The Untold Story of American Submarine Espionage By Sherry Sontag & Christopher Drew Public Affairs, 1998 349 pages; $25.00 THE COLD WAR WAS IN LARGE PART "fought" under water. U.S. and Soviet submarines trailed each...

The Silent War: The Cold War Battle Beneath the Sea.(Review)
September 1, 2001... The Silent War: The Cold War Battle Beneath the Sea By John Pina Craven Simon & Schuster, 2001 304 pages; $26.00 THE COLD WAR WAS IN LARGE PART "fought" under water. U.S. and Soviet submarines trailed each other, strategic missile...

Holding the Line: U.S. Defense Alternatives for the 21st Century.(Review)
September 1, 2001... Holding the Line: U.S. Defense Alternatives for the 21st Century Edited by Cindy Williams MIT Press, 2001 289 pages; $21.95 MILITARY OFFICERS AS WELL AS CIVILIAN warriors were not particularly fond of Bill Clinton. He was not a man of...

The John A. Simpson Memorial Fund.
September 1, 2001... The Enrico Fermi Institute of the University of Chicago has established a memorial fund in honor of the late John A. Simpson, who was a group leader in the Manhattan Project and one of the principal founders of the Bulletin. The fund will...

Chinese Nuclear Forces, 2001.(Statistical Data Included)
September 1, 2001... Bombers. China's bomber force is antiquated, based on Chinese-made versions of outdated Soviet aircraft. With the retirement of the Hong-5, a redesign of the Soviet Il-28 Beagle, the main bomber is the Hong-6, a medium-range bomber based on the...

Theater defense.(Brief Article)
September 1, 2001... THE STEADILY INCREASING NUMBER OF SOPHISTICATED missiles around the world is cause for concern in U.S. military circles. Because of breakthroughs in commercial computing, satellite technology, remote sensing, and geographic information systems,...